Federal immigration officers have shot 11 people since September as the Department of Homeland Security has ramped up deportation operations around the country. In the majority of the shootings, officers have fired into cars — a tactic that law enforcement authorities and policing experts have been trying for decades to curtail.
The vehicle shootings raise serious concerns among policing experts about the rapidly expanding deployment of DHS personnel into American communities, where officers are regularly captured on video clashing with immigrants who are in the country illegally as well as citizens who protest the arrests.
The shootings “are not one-offs,” said Jim Bueermann, the former police chief in Redlands, California, who now runs the Future Policing Institute, a research group. “This is clearly developing into a pattern and practice of how they deal with people in the enforcement of immigration laws, and to me that’s the most alarming thing we’re seeing.”
DHS says that in each case, the officers with Immigration and Customs Enforcement or Customs and Border Protection believed their lives were in danger and that in several of the incidents, officers were injured.
“The pattern is NOT of law enforcement using deadly force. It’s a pattern of vehicles being used as weapons by violent agitators to attack our law enforcement,” DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement. “Dangerous criminals — whether they be illegal aliens or U.S. citizens — are assaulting law enforcement and turning their vehicles into weapons to attack law enforcement.”
The 10 shootings, detailed below, show the varied circumstances and places where ICE and CBP officers have opened fire on people while they were conducting President Donald Trump’s campaign to crack down on immigrants in the U.S. The effort has unleashed thousands of officers across the country, raiding homes and workplaces, approaching people in courthouses, immigration offices and stores, and stopping people on the street. A protest movement has grown to resist the operations, leading to confrontations.
The people who were shot include suspected criminals, immigrants who lack permanent legal status and U.S. citizens. Three died. It is not clear how many of the shootings federal authorities have fully investigated; there have been no public reports of any findings, including whether the gunfire was deemed justified or whether officers have been disciplined. In at least four cases, people shot by agents have been charged with crimes; in two of those cases, the charges were later dismissed.
Firing on cars is one common thread. In seven cases, officers said they shot because a car was moving and they believed it posed a threat.
Chris Burbank, a former police chief in Salt Lake City who has helped the Justice Department investigate agencies suspected of civil rights abuses, said it was unsettling to see repeated cases of federal immigration officers’ firing on drivers. Since at least the 1990s, he said, police departments have tried to curb such shootings by adopting new standards guiding how officers deal with motorists. The movement, he said, was largely driven by cases in which people were needlessly injured or killed because officers said they were afraid they were going to get run over.
The new guidelines have been published by the International Association of Chiefs of Police and the Police Executive Research Forum, a nonprofit organization that studies policing nationwide, and adopted by many police departments. They aimed to prevent officers from positioning themselves in front of or behind vehicles and sought to limit when an officer was allowed to open fire, Burbank said.
DHS has been a focus of that effort. In 2013, the Police Executive Research Forum released a report that indicated CBP officers were deliberately putting themselves in the paths of cars, “exposing themselves to additional risk and creating justification for the use of deadly force.” The group recommended teaching officers that shooting at a car is dangerous and should be avoided and to adopt policies restricting it. DHS’ current policy prohibits officers from firing at moving vehicles, unless they have “reasonable belief” that the drivers pose imminent threats of death or serious injury. Officers should consider the hazards of out-of-control cars, the policy says.
Burbank said he wondered whether officers were being trained on that policy.
Based on his experience and observations of ICE conduct in recent months, including several of the shootings, Burbank said he felt that “there is not a lot of training, not a lot of accountability going on, and you have the feeling of ‘do your jobs at all costs.’” He added, “That’s a really difficult situation to put any law enforcement in, because it takes away your ability to de-escalate.”
Homeland Security officials have forcefully defended their officers, saying they are increasingly in danger, facing a steep uptick in attacks and violent protesters. “Officers are highly trained in de-escalation tactics and regularly receive ongoing use of force training,” McLaughlin said. She said officers are also trained to use “the minimum amount of force necessary to resolve dangerous situations and to prioritize the safety of the public and our officers.”
DHS requires every use of force incident and any discharge of an ICE firearm to be reported and reviewed, and all shootings are examined by “an appropriate law enforcement agency,” McLaughlin said. Those investigations are then followed by an internal ICE review.
DHS has not provided updates on any internal investigations into the shootings. The FBI, which is reviewing at least some of the encounters, said it does not talk about its investigations.
@ NBC News
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